Here’s What the ‘Manosphere’ Gets Wrong about Cuckoldry

Here’s What the ‘Manosphere’ Gets Wrong about Cuckoldry

By Brooke Scelza

In the “manosphere,” an online world of angry young men, those who have been “red-pilled,” in a nod to the film The Matrix, have purportedly been awakened to the truth about gender and sexual politics. At its core is the notion that men do not actually have systemic privilege; they are instead at the whims of women, who will take advantage of them unless they assert their dominance. In their worldview, the “cuck” is a disenfranchised victim of hyperfeminist power.

For evolutionary biologists, the term cuckoldry originated to describe cuckoo birds who lay their eggs in other species’ nests, leaving their offspring to be unknowingly raised by foster parents. In humans, it’s been more broadly used to describe the husbands of unfaithful wives: such husbands have been said to have been “cuckolded.” More recently, however, both the manosphere and the alt-right have adopted the term cuck as a more general synonym for weakness, desperation and foolishness.

The resurgence of such wording—previously popular in Renaissance and Shakespearian literature—has been fostered by research within evolutionary psychology, which has proven to be a treasure trove of inspiration for the most insidious interpretations of women’s behavior. Evolutionary psychologists have typically emphasized two core features of cuckoldry: that men are being tricked by women into raising nonbiological children and that the care they provide for those children is “wasted” effort. Both features have resonated within the manosphere as they depict women as amoral, promiscuous, and untrustworthy and infer that men are the victims of female cunning.

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A closer look at the science reveals a more complicated picture of cuckoldry, which is as likely to promote the views and interests of men as it is of women. Cross-cultural studies of cuckoldry reveal that men are not necessarily being tricked; they may also advocate for cuckoldry when it suits their interests. The manosphere depicts “cuckolds” as hapless suckers duped by cunning women, a picture that fuels misogynistic rhetoric and shields men from accountability for their words and actions. But anthropologists have shown that paternity and fatherhood are malleable concepts that both women and men have used to their advantage.

One of the most popular borrowed theories in online forums on cuckoldry is the idea that women pursue a dual-mating strategy—seeking long-term partners who will be reliable husbands and providers (“betas” in manosphere lingo) while surreptitiously seeking “alphas,” extra-pair partners with “better” genes to father their children. The trouble is, there is little evidence women actually engage in a dual-mating strategy. While a few studies have shown that women are more interested in extra-pair sex when they are ovulating, many others did not, and no studies have shown that these preferences are connected to extra-pair births. Even within evolutionary psychology, dual-mating theory has now been largely dismissed.

Anthropology reveals other explanations for cuckoldry that don’t necessitate deception. In some societies women maintain multiple partners as a way of ensuring they have reliable resources in the face of uncertainty. In many of these cases, societal norms and beliefs are constructed (by both men and women) to support this system. The folk notion of “partible paternity,” held in many Indigenous South American cultures, regards any man who has sex with a woman around the time of her pregnancy as a claimant to biological parentage, expected to help provision the woman and her child. Children with more than one “father” are more likely to survive than those with singular paternity. The system benefits women and children, but it is also believed to benefit men because it improves their access to extramarital partners and can strengthen male alliances. In my own work with Himba cattle herders in Namibia, where multiple partners are common for both men and women, men are taught by their fathers that they should suppress jealousy toward their wives’ lovers and that children should be treated equally, regardless of parentage.

Across history and cultures, men have utilized their wives’ extra-pair partnerships to suit their own needs. From ancient Greece to medieval Europe, infertile men enlisted lovers for their wives in order to continue their lineage. In other cases, men have suggested their wives take extramarital lovers who can serve as their allies or with whom they want to curry favor. This often occurred through formalized “wife lending.” In almost all cases, the husband was considered the legitimate father of any children born through these liaisons, and men’s interests were served by these arrangements.

In the human realm, at least, equating cuckoldry solely with trickery and the cuckolded as weak and foolish is inaccurate. This is not to dismiss the fact that extra-pair relationships are often conducted in secret or that they can cause harm. Rather this variation should remind us of the dangers of claiming universalist “natural” tendencies for humanity, as is so often the case with depictions of cuckoldry in the manosphere. We should understand not only why behaviors occur but also how they vary. Besides providing a more accurate picture of human behavior, paying more attention to variation can serve as an antidote to the nefarious co-optation of knowledge that feeds the online underbelly of Internet pseudoscience.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.